‘But this, of course, is all too late for your family, Monsieur Martinez. I am sorry I could not do more. I tried. Please forgive me?’
David quietly nodded. But he didn’t really mean it: he didn’t want to forgive, he didn’t want contrition: he wanted answers. As many answers as possible. His determination was returning, he wanted vengeance for his mother and his father. For his unborn sister. But to do that he needed to see the whole picture. Before Miguel could destroy the evidence.
He spoke up: ‘But, Officer Sarria, the link with Gurs? What happened there?’
Sarria shrugged his ignorance. ‘That I cannot tell you – because I simply do not know. No one seems to know. What I can say is this…’
He leaned to the centre of the table, his voice low and concerned: ‘I can only protect you so far. You are in danger. Very serious danger. The Society, and its powerful political sympathizers, they still want you dead. They need you dead.’
‘So what the hell do we do?’ Amy said. Her arms were crossed. ‘Where can we go? Britain’s too dangerous. Spain likewise. Where else?’
‘Anywhere. You do not know what danger you are in…’ Sarria glanced significantly at David and Amy. ‘Maybe this can assist. If you need motivating.’
He reached in a briefcase, and pulled out a large brown envelope. He opened the envelope and extracted a sheaf of photographs.
‘These are the photos from the Gurs murder. Eloise’s grandmother, Madame Bentayou. I was not sure whether to show them to you. But…but maybe you need to see them.’
David picked up a few of the glossy photos. Hesitantly. He was about to see what Eloise had seen through the window at the bungalow. What she could not, would not describe: the unspeakable murder of her grandmother.
He steeled himself, then looked at the biggest photo.
‘Oh Jesus.’
The photo showed the entire murder scene.
Madame Bentayou’s body was lying on the kitchen floor, a floor that was smeared with her own blood. Her body was identifiable from the clothes – and the tartan slippers; but there was no face to confirm this identification. Because her head had been cut off.
Not only had it been cut off, it seemed to have been pulled off. The jagged nature of the grotesque wound, the shredding and ribboning of the skin, the stretched elastic of the tormented ligaments, they all implied that her head had been wrenched away; as if someone had sawn halfway through her neck, then given up in anger, impatience – or blood lust. David tried not to imagine the scene: the terrorist pulling at the living head, until the neckbone split and the ligaments snapped.
And that was not all. Someone – Miguel – surely Miguel – had also cut off the hands: the old woman’s wrists were bleeding stumps, trailing veins and muscles. Puddles of blood extended from the stumps like flattened red gloves.
And then the hands had been nailed to the door. Several more photos showed the hands, impaled.
Two decomposing hands. Nailed. On the kitchen door.
Amy was hiding her face behind her fingers.
‘Horrible. Horrible horrible horrible…’
Sarria murmured, ‘I know. I am sorry. And there is more.’
David swore. ‘How can there be more? How much worse can it be?’
The officer opened the envelope again, and pulled out a final photo. It was a close-up of one of the severed hands. He pointed to the left of the photo, with his pen.
David squinted, and scrutinized. There seemed to be…an arc of marks on the flesh. Faint, but definitely there. A curved row of small indentations in the pale flesh.
‘Is that…’ He fought his own revulsion. ‘Is that…what I think it is?’
‘Oui. A human bite. A bite mark. It looks a little experimental…as if someone has just, impulsively, tried to bite the human flesh. To see what it tastes like.’
Silence ensued. The waves were lullaby rhythms on the beach. And then the other policeman leaned in. And spoke for the very first time.
‘Allez. Go. Anywhere. Before he finds you.’
29
The house was suitably quiet. The bored, yawning police constable – their guard and protector – was lying on the bed in the spare room, reading Goal. Suzie was working at the hospital: she’d refused to give up her work but allowed herself to be escorted on her commute. The au pair had fled back to Slovenia, two days ago, unnerved by the blood on the floor; Suzie’s mother had come to stay, to help look after Conor.
And Simon was reading about Eugen Fischer.
The online biography of the German scientist was stark:
‘Eugen Fischer (July 5, 1874 – July 9, 1967) was a German professor of medicine, anthropology and eugenics. He was a key proponent of Nazi scientific theories of racial hygiene that legitimized the extermination of Jews, sent an estimated half a million gypsies to their deaths, and led to the compulsory sterilization of hundreds of thousands of other victims.’
Simon sat ten inches from his screen, a metal savour of distaste in his mouth. Three intriguing aspects stood out in Fischer’s extended life story. The first was Fischer’s strong links with Africa.
‘In 1908 Eugen Fischer conducted field research in German Southwest Africa, now Namibia. He studied the offspring of “Aryan” men who had fathered children by native women. He concluded that the offspring of such unions – so-called “mischlinge” – should be eradicated after their usefulness had ended.’
Eradicated? Usefulness? Concluded?? The words were all the more powerful for being so dry and antiseptic.
Simon breathed in, and breathed out. And momentarily closed his eyes. Immediately, an image of Tomasky’s surging anger filled his mental gaze, and he snapped open his eyes once again. He could hear Conor playing in the room next door, vroom vrooming his favourite toy car into its toy garage.
Listening now to his son’s chatter, the boy talking to himself, Simon felt the fierce undertow of parental love: the painful protectiveness. Protect Conor. Protect him from all the evil in the world.
But the best way of doing that was by staying focussed. He returned to work.
‘Hitler was an avowed admirer of Eugen Fischer, especially the professor’s magnum opus Menschliche Erblichkeitslehre und Rassenhygiene (Human Heredity and Racial Hygiene). On his accession to power in 1933, Hitler appointed Fischer rector of Berlin University.
‘The Nazi conquest of Europe (1939-1942) gave Fischer, with the ardent encouragement of Adolf Hitler, the opportunity to extend his racial research, which he had begun decades before in Namibia. In the concentration camp of Gurs, in Nazi-occupied southwest France, Fischer commenced a series of detailed studies of various European races: Basques, gypsies, Jews, etc.’
Simon was scribbling urgently now. Eyes on the screen, eyes on the pad in front of him. And more:
‘The Nazi regime poured money into the “medical division” at Gurs. Rumours at the time spoke of significant discoveries achieved by the so-called Fischer experiments. However, the data recovered by Fischer at Gurs was lost in the chaos of the Allied invasion of Europe and the destruction of the Nazi regime (1944-1945). It has never been conclusively proved whether the Fischer experiments yielded scientifically valuable results. The consesnsus, today, is that the rumours of “racial discoveries” were Nazi propaganda in themselves, and that Fischer revealed nothing of importance.’
The final section on Fischer’s life was tantalizing, yet even more mystifying.
‘Many people were scandalized when, following the Allied defeat of the Third Reich, Eugen Fischer escaped serious punishment for his connections to, and research for, the Nazis. Indeed, he later became Professor Emeritus at Freiburg University, and in 1952 he was appointed as honorary president of the newly-founded German Anthropological Society.